frugal

This morning I was feeling all pleased with myself because I’m doing so amazingly well at not spending money. Then I looked at the calendar and realised it’s only the sixth of February. Oh. There’s still a long road ahead of me. A really long road, if the first (not quite) week of the month is anything to go by… Does anyone else feel like it’s been February forever? No? Just me?

Yesterday I spent money. I know. I know. But my mother had invited the troops and I over for a BBQ lunch, and she was shouting (lunch, I mean, not yelling at me), and then she messaged me to ask could I possibly break my Frugal February plans and pick up some “nice fresh bread for lunch”. What was I going to do? Say no?

We stopped at the bakery and I exchanged seven dollars and forty cents for two loaves of Nice Fresh Bread.

I miss that seven dollars. Hell, I even miss the forty cents. That is money I will never get back.

I kind of did get the money back though, because all my ranting about minimalism and consumerism obviously affected my husband in some way. Today he cleaned out his top drawer. Do you know how long it’s been since he cleaned out his top drawer? Well, to be honest I can’t actually say. But what I can say is that he found a Christmas card we received when I was pregnant with the kid who turns four next month. And that Christmas card contained Three Hundred Dollars.

He found another fifty dollars floating around in the drawer too. So that means that we are now up $342.60, which is great. But, you know, it could’ve been $350…

In other news, my tight ‘n’ light grocery shop doesn’t look like it’ll be enough to sustain us for the week. We’re out of Weetbix (okay fine, Homebrand Wheat Biscuits). And bananas. And I estimate we only have one cup of oats left to go. Looks like breakfast will be toast for six for the next few days. Hmm, I guess that Nice Fresh Bread will come in handy after all.

– Fern xxx

Thankfully we won’t be running out of lunch foods any time soon. I have been a very good girl this weekend, planning and baking for the week ahead. Somebody give me a medal!
(Oh, and then strip me of that medal because there is a freaking TYPO in this video. I can’t even handle it. I didn’t see it until it was uploaded. Wah!)

Okay, so I can hardly claim to be living a frugal life when I’ve been at this thing for two days, but I’m pretty sure there’s a saying out there that suggests it’s good to start out the way you intend to be. Or do. Or something. I’m too lazy to google it, and anyway, I don’t really like quotes.

To contradict myself, I would now like to share a quote that comes from Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things (it’s on Netflix, you should watch it).

Love people and use things, because the opposite never works.

I know. Deep. But it’s true, don’t you think? We should spend more time loving each other, truly being with each other, than looking out for things, stuff, that we think will make us “happy”. I mean, how exactly will a new candle, or an expensive bottle of perfume, or a 10th over-sized coffee mug impact our lives in the long run? After the thrill of the new has worn off, is that purchase going to become a treasured memory? Or is that item going to become just one more thing you need to dust…

I’ve been looking at my house differently today. Even after 100 days of Sh*t Sorting towards the end of 2016, I can still see junk everywhere. Thanks to Christmas (and my overwhelming urge to Buy All The Things in the lead up to the holidays) we’ve added new junk to the old junk. To my left is a window through which I can see our back yard, and it’s a mess. A jumble of faded plastic contraptions my kids have been programmed to believe they need. To my right is a drawer in which there are two phone covers, neither of which have been removed from their original packaging. I bought them because I had a new phone. I bought them because they were cheap. But all I’ve ended up with is unnecessary clutter and $11 less in my bank account. Wasted money is not a bargain.

It’s not easy to change overnight. In fact, I can honestly say I haven’t really changed at all, because this morning I ran into a friend who mentioned that perhaps she’ll go out on the town to celebrate her birthday this weekend. Immediately I said I would come. Music! Drinks! Fun! But that all equals money, and I’m not supposed to be spending money. And then I came home and tinted my own eyebrows so I wouldn’t have to pay someone to do it for me. But as soon as I looked in the mirror I thought, Oh I’ll have to go and get them threaded now.

For whatever reason, Go and spend money (even when I’m actively working towards not spending money), seems to be my first reaction to everything.

Being the first week back at school, my daughters are all fired up about their new stationary, and how cool everyone else’s books look. They want me to cover their books. They want me to take them to the shops so we can pick out rolls of sticky plastic to spread over the cardboard jackets of their exercise books, because everyone reckons this will help protect their work. But will it? What difference will it make? I could spend the money, buy the junk, waste hours attempting to apply it smoothly… How much enjoyment would my children actually take from it? How long would the thrill truly last?

I’ve told the kids about Frugal February, about our attempts to spend less, save more, be content with our lot. And they’re okay with it. If you want decorated books, I told them, just find some pictures you like and I’ll help you paste them onto the covers. They seemed happy with that. They are happy with that. Children, it would seem, really understand that money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness.

– Fern xxx

Another great way to save money is to prepare your own foods rather than buying pre-packaged stuff as much as possible. Check out this video for a few tasty, cost-effective lunch ideas.

The weird thing about life is the way we spend so much time looking forward to things. We wait and wait for a particular day, and then the day comes, and then, often, it’s just like, Oh.

Take today, for example. I sent my kids to school for the first time this year. All holidays long I was all, I can’t wait for these children to be out of my house. And now, as I type, those children are out of my house. Am I making the most of it? Nope. I’m just kind of drifting around, wondering what to do with myself. I even made a pot of soup, for god’s sake, and it’s the hottest month of the year. Why was I so excited about this?

Because I’m tired of getting excited for no reason, I’ve decided to take a step in another direction. Yes, from now on I’m going to actively work towards things that I’m not excited about. Okay, not things. Just thing. A thing. One. But it’s a big thing. In fact, it’s a Very Big Thing. It’s such an incredibly Big Thing that I think you might want to sit down for this…

I’m breaking up with Kmart.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past year, I’m basically the Kmart Queen. My YouTube channel is full of Kmart hauls. My drawers are full of Kmart clothes. And you know all those Kmart memes your friends tag you in on Facebook? Yeah, I get tagged in those almost daily. For months and months and months now, shopping at Kmart has been what I do. And I’m not saying I don’t want to do it anymore, but I am starting to think that maybe, just maybe, all those bargains haven’t been serving me quite the way I’d imagined.

Let’s talk about the clothes I mentioned, for a start. The assorted items I picked up and chucked in my trolley because they looked cute on the hanger; because the price tag had a yellow reduced to clear sticker on it. I packed those items myself, stuffed them into a plastic bag along with the 15 other things that I just had to have, and brought them home. Then, after showing them off to my camera, they went back into the plastic bag. Eventually I’d find time to stuff them into a drawer. And then, weeks later, I’d finally get around to trying the items on.

I don’t even want to admit how many pieces of my Kmart chic collection ended up being rejected after the first wear. They didn’t fit right or they didn’t look right or they didn’t feel right, and I’d say to myself, Oh well, it was so cheap, it doesn’t really matter. But when you’re buying a lot of cheap things they end up being expensive things. And when I add on all the Kmart clothes that shrunk in the wash (seriously, 50% of all my Kmart purchases have shrunk in the wash) I actually start to feel a bit sick at how much money I have wasted on clothes I do not wear.

Of course, it’s not just the clothes. It’s the homeware I didn’t need, the toys the kids don’t play with, the craft supplies I still haven’t taken out of the packet… It’s the fact that I’ve been fooling myself into thinking I can shop my way to happiness. I am just another consumer. Even with a boot load of shopping bags I’m not going to be satisfied.

This morning, soon after I got home and realised that an empty house is not quite as enjoyable as I’d anticipated, I logged into my online bank account and worked out how much money I spent unnecessarily in February of 2016. After I got over the shock (my god it was a lot of dollars), I looked at the total figure scribbled on my notepad and thought to myself, No. You will not do that again.

So here I am, on the eve of the first of February, vowing to not spend any money that doesn’t need to be spent for an entire month. I mean, I’ll still be purchasing chickens, because we decided months ago we were definitely going through with the backyard chooks thing, but aside from that? Nothing. No coffees out in town. No impulse buys for the kids. No takeaways on a Friday night. And, depending on how it goes, I might just keep going with the No Spending in March.

My husband and I are lucky. We don’t have debt (aside from a mortgage, and a student loan I racked up while I floundered around trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life), and we don’t have credit cards. We can afford the things we need (and we can afford a lot of things we don’t need too), but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what we can to save more money. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about where our money is going. What it does mean is that we are in a position to build the life we want for our family. It’s just going to take a bit of work.

Tomorrow morning my family will wake up to find that Frugal February has begun. It means I won’t be able to take the kids out to the tramp park, but I can always take them to the playground. Or the beach. Or the library. And I reckon that’s enough. I mean, okay, I’m not particularly looking forward to the month ahead, but I am excited about what this change in lifestyle (even if it is only for a few weeks) may bring. Oh wait. No. I’m not going to get excited. Dammit! Why am I such an excitable person? It only leads to disappointment.

– Fern xxx

My Kmart hauls have always been popular, but they have got to stop! If only it was as much fun to talk about the things I haven’t bought…

Meet Fern

I write things and I film things and I post things on the internet. I talk a lot about kids, because I have a lot of kids, but I also talk about shopping for bargains, and life in the country, and what it's like to be a little bit mental.

This is my life. The Fern Life. I may not have chosen it, but I'm glad that it chose me.

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